Melba's Bakehouse & Eatery — Restaurant in Wagga Wagga City Council

Set on the main drag in Wagga Wagga’s busy shopping district, Melbas Bakery and Eatery Wagga was recommended to us by a local. Walking into the cafeteria-like interior, I had my doubts. How could mass-produced breakfast at this level have the artisan touches I crave? I settled in with a decent cappuccino ($4.50) made on their house-roasted Green Bean Coffee and prepared to choke on my assumptions.

Topped with more bacon than seemed proper, the house-made waffle ($16) was the fluffiest American waffle I’ve encountered since Las Vegas. Dripping in (real) maple syrup with oozing pats of Pepe Saya butter, this plate conquered me (but I gave it a really good bash).

Continuing the Americana theme, Memphis Boston beans ($18) threaded pulled smoked pork butt though chipotle beans in the best rendition of this dish I’ve eaten. It’s served with poached eggs and house-made sourdough, and cleverly garnished with lemon and pickled onions to aid digestion (it’s another big serve of food). We’d added on some chilli sauce that looked like an insipid faintly pink mayo. so we slathered it on, only to be thoroughly spanked for our assumptions.

Don’t judge books by their covers was clearly the lesson of the day. Recommended!

Edit 11/11/20: It’s super rare for me to revisit a spot when I’m travelling somewhere new, but I broke that rule for Melba’s. This means I’ve now tried all four items on their short breakfast menu, including this well-balanced breakfast wrap ($15). Avoiding the usual issues, it wasn’t too wet, with quality baby spinach keeping a bit of crunch against cheese, bacon, fried eggs, onion relish, chipotle aioli and a hashbrown. Served open, the brekky sandwich ($12) normally is a vegetable-leaning affair with mushrooms, onion, tomatoes, American cheese, a fried egg and Hollandaise. My dining companion got bacon and hashbrown envy so opted to customise, to good effect. This time I ordered my coffee ($4.50) strong and found it much better to drink. I reckon I ripped Melba’s off half a star when I only awarded them 4.5 stars last time ‘round... better...

Melbas is ok at best for the moment. The tables have a sticky coating which they've been getting complaints about for a while. I agree with other reviewers, the customer service was fine, but could've been better. They made the pancakes with apple crumble when we only asked for them with icecream and syrup, and it was told to the chef, yet they still messed it up. They came back with 2 standard pancakes and no third like ordered. We got a free pancakes on the house, then the third arrived, annoying my aunty who was waiting for her food while everyone had nearly finished. Everything tasted good, the only real gripe was a soggy breakfast burrito. The customer service was slow and a tedious process for me and my family. Melba's is nice, but not the cleanest, with visible crumbs on some tables; however our table was clean. It's annoying knowing I expected a higher quality place and it turned out to resemble the reviews. The food was good, everything else was OK. Do I recommend? If your looking for a long sit down and chat with people while you wait for them to make your food, and possibly (and i state possibly, not guaranteed) mess it up and repeat the process; then yeah, it's good. Otherwise I wouldn't recommend it, especially if your trying to have a quick and nice breakfast, Melbas is basically a fancy restaurant for baking goods. Thank you to the staff for putting up with the delays our docket provided. Hopefully you can all take this into consideration and fix the small problems I have...

Ordered- Orange juice Berry Watermelon juice Ham, cheese tomarto croissant, spicy Hawaiian sandwich, some incredible beef, ham pickle and cheese creation and a jelly slice. We had a beautiful young blonde miss on her first day (doing an incredible job) take our order, we had a little Mix up with our original order. The manager was beyond incredible, training newbies, running the show... so amazing and incredible at her job, not losing her cool or patients with her newbies today. She swooped in, fixed our missing sandwich. She went above and beyond without missing a beat (love you need a pay rise, extra annual leave or something!!!) Once we got our order back to the car - we were more than grateful for our order. We started eating our food in the car... and OMG it was incredible! All of it, even the juice was perfection. And that Jelly slice... He's not stopped talking about it since he had his first bite! We called in looking for a quick bite, without going somewhere chain. Something local we could support on our way through. We are already planning our next call in to the store. Well done. Excellent food. Could not be anymore impressed by the food, the staff, the whole experience. Especially today being a Sunday....